DoubleClick halted by hackers

By 07.29.2004 :: 2:18PM EDT07.29.2004

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

not only are we seeing an unprecedented number of virus infections these days, but it also seems that denial of service attacks are on the rise as well. google was slowed by mydoom, microsoft is being targeted by zindos, and now doubleclick has experienced a large scale ddos. some would argue whether or not that is a bad thing, but nonetheless doubleclick is a business and a very large scale internet presence, serving advertisements for some of the most popular sites on the web, such as cnn, schwab, and gateway. the attack began on tuesday morning, with thousands of machines targeting doubleclick's dns infrastructure; it lasted for a few hours, which led to major disruptions for all 900 of doubleclick's customers. the attack caused the sites that utilize doubleclick for advertising to respond very slowly since part of their content could not be loaded; many sites resorted to removing the ad content temporarily to return their sites to service. this attack was very similar to the recent attacks on akamai dns servers, proving that it requires much less effort to disrupt the internet than one would think–malicious hackers only need to target key strangle points.

user comments 18 comment(s)

uhm…first post!(2:21pm est thu jul 29 2004)no real comment. – by mrk

ah..(2:22pm est thu jul 29 2004)apparently someone has beef with doubleclick. why on earth could that be?– by cousin lenny

um…(2:23pm est thu jul 29 2004)wasn't this yesterday's news .. or the day before that's news? – by waybackmachine

however, for the virus author, next time rather than just knocking out their servers, use a little non-virtual explosive ordinance. that will really send a message. – by /sm

say what?(5:13pm est thu jul 29 2004)this had nothing to do with a virus other than possibly the machines used in the ddos were zombies infected with trojans in the past. the attack was on dns servers, probably bind servers on unix. highly doubt they use ms dns for public servers…nobody is that crazy. dos generally has nothing to do with os type, just wasting bandwidth or processing power on syns until service grinds to a halt. this type of attack is possible on any dns on any os unless difficult safeguards are taken to minimize the potential. – by ddos sucks

ddos sucks(7:22pm est thu jul 29 2004)actually, a school i work for uses windoze for its internal and external dns machines. they would like to move off of it, but no one has the training or expertise (and i am only a student there, so i don't count) to move them to unix/linux. also, the thanks was not going to doubleclick for running windoze but rather to the people who run windoze at home and had the virus that caused the dns attack. and yes, thank you macrohard for letting us make this attack on doubleclick…my favorite site :-/. – by rambles too much

doubleclick sux anyway(8:44pm est thu jul 29 2004)as long as sites we dont like are being attacked, thats supposed to somehow be ok? – by make sense

the real question(10:10pm est thu jul 29 2004)what makes hacking ok? i mean imagine if your server was up and running and some one just planted a virus, or started making it fall apart… how would you feel. ( not that i have any sympathy for double click… bunch of ad blasters and spammers… but anywho yeah someone answer my question. :-) – by your heart talking..

“the real question…”(5:03am est fri jul 30 2004)re: “the real question (10:10pm est thu jul 29 2004)what makes hacking ok? i mean imagine if your server was up and running and some one just planted a virus, or started making it fall apart… how would you feel.” – by your heart talking..

what exactly makes you define this as hacking? i see no skill here. lets call these guys what they are … criminals.

not all hackers are criminals. take that with as many grains of salt as you choose.

– by bovinefeces

where next(5:20am est fri jul 30 2004)its not so bad as long as they don't know out any useful sites – by playboy.com

your heart talking..(6:10am est fri jul 30 2004)well stop talking with ur heart and try using ur brain instead.. doubleclick r a nuisance and so i care little that they have been taken down for a while..taking ur form of argument to an extreme..ud be saying we shouldnt put saddam in jail becos would we really like to be treated like him.. – by realist